UrbanUpdate

Zyn nicotine pouches have recently been spotted with Major League baseball players skirting tobacco bans, on the Joe Rogan Experience, and behind the lip of Tucker Carlson, who recently gave what sounded like an infomercial on the Full Send podcast, calling the pouches a “massive life-enhancer” that he uses around the clock. In New York City, it’s now possible to walk into a bodega, buy a can of Zyn, step outside, and throw it and hit another store that sells the brand.

Unlike cigarettes or vapes, these pouches are discreet, typically tucked in the upper lip. Unlike chewing tobacco and traditional pouches, they don’t require spitting any brown goo—they’re made with a white nicotine powder instead of ground tobacco leaves. And it turns out that pouches filled with a highly addictive drug—nicotine—sell really well. Usage has doubled annually since 2019, and overall sales exceeded 800 million units in the first three months of 2022, according to research published by the American Cancer Society.

There are lots of brands of pouches on the market, including Rogue, On!, and Velo. If you find the fratty aura of the stuff off-putting, you might prefer the colorfully packaged Lucy pouches, billed as “nicotine for normal people,” and sold by a company co-founded by Soylent co-founder David Renteln. But it’s Zyn that has emerged as the “Kleenex” of pouches—it has by far the largest share of overall sales of the product. Last year, tobacco giant Philip Morris International acquired Zyn's parent company, Swedish Match, in a $16 billion transaction.

A can of 15 Zyn pouches costs around 5 or 6 bucks at the gas station. They come in flavors like coffee, citrus, cinnamon, as well as more vibe-based flavors like “chill” and “smooth.” (These flavors were at one point pitched as “flavor ban approved,” in an apparent reaction to current and impending bans on flavored nicotine products.)

There are also now Zynfluencers who’ve made nicotine pouches a part of their online personalities. Videos on TikTok tagged with “zyn” are approaching 300 million views. (The hashtag has become popular enough that guys on Instagram are using it to juice engagement on unrelated posts.) There’s a photoshopped sticker of the Pope holding up a Zyn container available on Etsy. There’s “Jesus died for our Zyns” art on Instagram. One enthusiastic Zyn user dubbed his 600-can collection the “Zynagog,” earning Zyn merch—including a sign flecked with used pouches—in the process. In a throwback to the cig-merch days of “Camel Cash” and “Marlboro Miles,” chronic users can save up Zyn reward codes to exchange for gear, including a branded Yeti cooler.

This incognito stimulant has unsurprisingly struck a nerve with the rise-and-grind optimizer guys. The concept of nicotine as a brain-enhancing nootropic has been around for a while. Andrew Huberman has done a deep dive on his podcast, and Dr. Peter Attia has discussed experimenting with nicotine as a performance enhancer. 

Nicotine pouches have caught on as nicotine vaporizers like Juul have come up against regulatory bodies and wary consumers. There's an appeal to a nicotine product that does not involve electronics. Perhaps it's even a facet of the pro-smoking discourse as predicted by writer Max Read, based in part on its appeal to “trad” health influencers.

Smoking, of course, is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Nicotine itself does not cause cancer, though using it certainly isn't healthy. But we know there are much safer ways to ingest nicotine than lighting up a dart. E-cigarettes—vapes—are considered by many to be a legitimate form of harm reduction. An FDA-regulated category of products known as Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT), includes lozenges, patches, and gums. But while they are sometimes seen as a possible off-ramp from cigarettes and vapes, nicotine pouches, experts tell GQ, are not yet proven, or approved, for this use.

But in the mind of consumers, regulators, and Big Tobacco, nicotine pouches seem to occupy a gray area. They don't cause worst harms of cigarettes and they’re more “fun” than actual smoking cessation products, which often have boring, pharmaceutical branding. Philip Morris maintains that Zyn is only for current tobacco users looking for a healthier choice.

There might be some harm reduction potential, said Erin Vogel, a social psychologist and associate professor at University of Oklahoma’s Health Promotion Research Center and Department of Pediatrics of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, who has studied youth perceptions and willingness to use nicotine pouches. But “we really don’t know yet,” she told GQ.

There isn’t enough data to know about the long-term effects on nicotine pouches as a way to quit smoking or vaping, but the tobacco industry can move much faster than science or the federal government. At the same time, nicotine pouch sales have increased by nearly 500% in just a few years, in part due to advertising all over gas stations and convenience stores. Vogel says she has even seen oral nicotine products advertised on social media, which is not supposed to be permitted.

Elizabeth Gerndt, project director at Counter Tools, a national nonprofit that works with different states to reduce the impact of tobacco, nicotine, and unhealthy food in retail environments, says she is glad GQ is highlighting the nicotine pouch trend, although she says it’s not necessarily a good thing.

The tobacco industry keeps winning a constant race, Gerdnt said. When Counter Tools started tracking Juul usage, consumers had already moved on to different vape brands. “By the the time we have good data, the tobacco industry has come up with a new product that’s really exciting to people.”

Big tobacco now speaks the language of harm reduction and a “smoke-free future,” but Gernt notes this ambition does not line up with the billions still spent on marketing cigarettes and suggests any charitable notions from the tobacco industry should be taken with skepticism. The industry might just be looking for more appealing ways to get people addicted to nicotine. Zyn pouches are marketed as “tobacco-free,” which Gerdnt said can imply a lower risk, and is potentially misleading to consumers. And getting a regulatory handle on emerging nicotine products is difficult, Gerdnt said, because the marketing is done before the health impacts are fully assessed.

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Irfan Rahman, a professor and researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center, pointed out that oral tobacco in several forms has been popular in India far before Zyn was conceived. Rahman runs a lab focused on environmental toxicants like cigarettes, and has co-authored multiple papers on nicotine pouches.

Rahman’s interest in oral nicotine products is personal. He recalls catching stray tobacco spit on his shirt in a movie theater as a kid in India. He also remembers taking long-distance flights to the US and UK while passengers freely lit up in the cabin.

For the past three decades, Rahman has been studying the harms of both cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Then he started seeing products like Zyn available at not only gas stations, but also airports across the world, from Newark to Heathrow. In his observations of the new nicotine pouches, his lab has noticed some of the same nitrosamines, which are chemicals found in cigarette smoke.

Dentists can now immediately tell if a patient has been taking nicotine pouches, Rahman said, due to noticeable gum damage. (You can see nicotine pouch users mention gum injuries online, too.)

“Dentists here are very worried,” Rahman said. In Indian populations, Rahman has seen chewing tobacco lead to gastrointestinal refractory disease (GERD), which can lead to more serious issues like gut and esophageal cancers.

When you put a Zyn extract on a plate with gum cells, Rahman explained, a stress response can be observed. He compares it to getting a cut on your hand—you can get cut and heal, but after repeated injury, healing is impaired, and scarring occurs. In the delicate tissue of the gums, lumps—or fibroids—can form after repetitive injury. Oral submucous fibrosis, which is very common in India due to chewing tobacco use, may eventually be seen stateside, he warned.

Clinically, dentists are seeing gum recession, Rahman said, and gingival crevicular (GCV) fluid that indicates inflammation in nicotine pouch users. He has concerns that the gum damage from nicotine pouch use may also lead to tooth loss.

In three to four years, Rahman expects to see more cases of gum recession in regular nicotine pouch users. The long-term neurological effects of nicotine on young people will take longer to observe. The scientific and clinical evidence is still emerging, he said—but the marketing blitz is full steam ahead.

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Ashwin Rodrigues is a freelance writer. He often covers health, fitness, and things you might've heard on a podcast. He previously worked at Morning Brew as a business features reporter. Even more previous than that, he was a staff writer on the culture team at VICE. His byline can also... Read moreXRelated Stories for GQHealth